Small steps...

...to the goal to be active on the HF bands are what I´m taking. But I´m in no hurry.

Last week I found someone that sold "a lot of radio equipment". It seemed to be mostly CB equipment but I went there and took a look and see if I would find anything interesting. I stayed there for 2 hours! I had to stop myself from dragging home too much, "maybe good to have" things.

The best thing I bought was a manual tuner from MFJ, 941E. I also got a HT for 70 cm by Kenwood and a scanner AOR AR-1000XLT (seems dead....) and an amp of unknown kind (probably CB) and two SWR meters. I do not have any antenna for 70 cm with BNC connector, so I might try to homebrew something like some of these:

http://blog.g4ilo.com/2010/05/satellite-antenna.html

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/collapsible_fabric_yagi_antenna.html 


I also received an order from kitsandparts.com . I´m very impressed with their range of stuff, both parts and kits.. ;-) He got building blocks called RF Toolkit so you can add them together to form a transceiver or receiver of different kinds. Really cool.  I will definitely be a returning customer! This is what I got:

The T130-2 toroids I will use together with longwire antennas. The ferrites are for a receiver and good to have in the future. The 30 m LPF I will use with the Genesis Q5 probably in QRSS mode but have to get a 10.140 MHz crystal first. Probably will be from Genesis if I don´t get any other option? The SWR bridge will go together with two ampere panel meters that probably is on it´s way from China right now.Also got 5 NE602 mixers to use with the receiver (more on that later).

During last week I tried to build a dipole, with Slinkys! I really didn´t have any time to evalutate performance (and it was also hanging maybe too low to be a good antenna) but I kept it on receive on the WSPR system.

QS1R, WinradHD and Solar Storm

I´ve had the QS1R receiver for about 1,5 years now. It´s a great receiver, one of the most advanced software defined radios that you can get among those aimed for private use. The major reason why I bought it instead of the Perseus is the openness. All code is GPL! The software architecture is really first class, where DSP are done in a server process and the GUI is in another one.

The major drawback with the current state of QS1R software is unfortunately that it lacks spectrum recording, maybe the most important feature for a DX listener. The idea of recording a wide bit of the AM band on top of the hour and then be able to go over every interesting frequency at a later time is something we have got used to. Luckily I can use the QS1R with another software, Winrad orginally developed by Alberto I2PHD, that supports recording. A new version of an alternative version of Winrad called WinradHD was recently released and also a new DLL plugin for QS1R was released also. Now I can record up to 2 MHz wide but I only need  around 1200 kHz (1710 - 530). A lot of HD is needed.

I tried to listen for DX on the morning of 5th of April  with only a mini whip antenna (designed by PA0RDT), see top image. K-index was from 3-7 so no transatlatic DX was noted I thought at first and we are also late in the season, but after a closer look on the files I see that there are some sunrise improvements and around 0400 UTC there are some Latin American stations on the higher portion of the band (1400 - 1600). I´ve not had time to go through them so I can put definite IDs but my guess is that it´s stations from Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. I hope to try this receiving setup more during the Spring.

First QSO

Ok, now it´s done. First QSO completed. I did check in to the local club net a while ago, but today I heard SM5DVP call CQ on the nearby Echolink node SL5ZYT-L on 145.275 kHz that I happened to monitor. I answered and had a nice chat with him. He was in Eskilstuna connected over Internet and I used my newly purchased  Wouxun KG-UVD1P . It´s a nice radio with very good value for money I think. I will buy another battery and BNC connection so I can connect it to some other antenna later on. I want to try out satellite communication. Talking about Echolink I have signed up and validated my call sign. I will try it later on to see if it´s any good.

Soldering

To be able to build my amateur radio equipment I have to solder electronic components. That´s a basic fact. :-) My experience so far with soldering has been coax cables and wires from torroids to be soldered to connectors, that is impedance transformers for receiving antennas . For that task a very basic soldering pen has been used.

But if I want to be able to solder small components I have to have something better. I started bidding on nice ones I saw on auction (Weller etc) but they all came up on level I didn´t think it was worth spending. Probably they all are alot better than the one I bought. Time will tell. The one I found cost 600 SEK (~80 US dollar) on the local store Kjell & Co, but it´s atleast equiped with temperature control and the tips can be changed over to smaller ones.

You can see an ancient modem on the bench in the top image for practicing. When I feel compfortable with my soldering skills I will move over to build the Softrock Lite II for 30 meters or maybe I start with an FM receiver kit I got laying around. Before I can get to the SMT components I think I have to get hold of some nice flux.